I remember in the early nineties I found in my grandmother’s antique store one of those old black candlestick phones that you would jiggle to ring the operator. It didn’t have a rotary dial.
I plugged it in and got dial tone. I jiggled the hook and an operator answered the phone and asked me something. I don’t remember if I hung up or talked with them.
When mobile phones came out they improved the system significantly but it was still very much old tech.
Getting the entire world to switch to something better would be quite the undertaking.
Getting the entire world to switch to something better would be quite the undertaking.
But that’s probably not necessary. You could install something on your phone that does phone number lookup and then just dials the number as normal. The service doesn’t need to be built into the old phone networks this way.
Because the phone system is old
It’s also backwards compatible to an extreme:
I remember in the early nineties I found in my grandmother’s antique store one of those old black candlestick phones that you would jiggle to ring the operator. It didn’t have a rotary dial.
I plugged it in and got dial tone. I jiggled the hook and an operator answered the phone and asked me something. I don’t remember if I hung up or talked with them.
When mobile phones came out they improved the system significantly but it was still very much old tech.
Getting the entire world to switch to something better would be quite the undertaking.
But that’s probably not necessary. You could install something on your phone that does phone number lookup and then just dials the number as normal. The service doesn’t need to be built into the old phone networks this way.